Skeleton Dance

'Gideon Oliver. I'm from the University of Washington. Uh, Professor Oliver,” he added, in hopes that it might impress her a little more.

It didn't come close. “Come with me, please,” she said briskly, throwing him a we'll-soon-see-about-this look over one padded shoulder.

She marched him past a flimsy wallboard partition to a narrow hallway off which a row of offices, constructed from the same cheap wallboard, opened. The first was Beaupierre's, as cluttered and utilitarian as the outer area, with nothing on the walls but a marked-up scheduling calendar, and with piles of open books and journals teetering on tables and even on the floor. The director, seated at his desk, didn't hear them coming. Motionless and absorbed, he had his nose buried in a journal.

'Professor Beaupierre,” Madame Lacouture began.

Beaupierre looked up vacantly, focused with some effort, and smiled. “Hello, Gideon, what are you doing here?'

'We had an appointment.'

'Today?'

'I'm afraid so. We made it at yesterday's staff meeting, but if it's not convenient—'

'No, of course it's convenient. I'm at your service. Merci, Madame Lacouture.'

'Next time,” she told him in French, “please try to remember to inform me of your schedule.” It was something she told him a lot, Gideon guessed.

'Sit down, sit down,” Beaupierre said. “Just give me a moment, a single, er, moment . . . extremely interesting . . . Bulletin de la Societe Prehistorique Francaise . . . want to see . . .” He returned to his journal while Gideon took the armchair beside the desk. At his elbow was a holder with two photographs, one of Madame Beaupierre, a svelte, glossily handsome woman whom Gideon had once met, and the other of Beaupierre's two grown daughters, women who had been cruelly tricked by their genes in that it was their dough-faced, sausage-shaped father they took after.

'How very interesting,” Beaupierre said, pulling off his glasses and looking up from the journal at about the time Gideon was wondering if the director had forgotten he was there. “Were you aware that Revillion has conclusively demonstrated that the blade cores from Seclin have a closer relationship, volumetrically speaking, to Upper Paleolithic than Middle Paleolithic forms?'

'Ah . . . no, as a matter of fact I wasn't.'

'You must admit, it raises a number of intriguing issues.'

'It certainly does.” For starters: who was Revillion, where was Seclin, and what the hell was “volumetrically speaking'? “Jacques, do you suppose we could get on to Tayac? We only have half-an-hour.'

'Of course, of course.” Beaupierre closed the journal, pushed it to one side, and made a visible effort to concentrate on his guest, peering at him as if through misted glass. His open, friendly face was all concentration. “How can I help you?'

'How about starting by giving me an overview of the whole affair in your own words? Just to make sure I have it straight.'

Beaupierre nodded gravely, crossed one knee over the other, steepled his stubby fingers in front of his mouth, and proceeded, in a relatively coherent fashion, to tell Gideon the familiar story: how Carpenter had been working the Tayac site on his own; how he had jubilantly proclaimed his great find of four perforated bones; how an anonymous letter to Paris-Match had soon charged that they had actually come, not from a Paleolithic abri, but from the collection of a small, out-of-the-way museum where they'd been stored for upwards of forty years.

Gideon teetered on the edge of asking Jacques’ opinion on whether or not Jean Bousquet had been the writer of that anonymous letter, but he couldn't quite talk himself into the conviction that to do so would not be crossing the forbidden line between legitimate research and ‘playing detective,’ something he'd promised both Joly and Julie not to do. Reluctantly, he set it aside for the time being. Maybe later he'd figure out a way of talking himself into doing it. That, or renegotiate.

'What museum did the bones come from, Jacques?” he asked instead. “It's near here somewhere, isn't it? I'd like to go and see the bones for myself.'

'What? Oh, it was . . . yes, not too far . . .” He snapped his fingers ineffectually. “The name escapes me, mm . . .” He rolled his eyes upward but apparently found no clue on the ceiling and went on with his recounting of the hoax: how the shocking accusation of fraud had been substantiated, and how a wretched, repudiated Carpenter had had to resign in disgrace.

'Such a terrible, terrible end for him,” he finished with a sigh. “Would you care for some coffee? It should be . . . I can ask Madame Lacouture to, mm, ah . . .'

'I sure w—no, thanks,” Gideon said, remembering barely in time the pot of black, gluey matter on the warmer. “Jacques, what do you honestly think Carpenter's part in all this was? I know you've thought about it a lot. Could he have planted those bones himself, or—'

Beaupierre nearly came out of his chair. “Certainly not!” he exclaimed, shocked. “What a thought! Ely Carpenter was the very model of integrity.''I'm only asking the question; I'm not suggesting anything,” Gideon said placatingly.

'Ha, you'd better not ask such a question of Michel. He'll throw you out the door. Ely was like a son to him—not in age, of course, but otherwise—and the idea that . . . that . . . well, the very idea that Ely himself would . . .'

'Well, who then?” He didn't like upsetting Jacques, but this was one of the questions that had brought him to France in the first place. And now he had more reason than ever to ask it.

'I'm sure I—I have no idea.'

'Come on, Jacques. You must have thought about it.'

'Thought about it? Oh, well, of course, thought about it . . . but . . . to what purpose . . . mm . . .” His fingers crept longingly across his desk toward the journal, his eyes toward the printed page.